Layoff Sets Mayfield Heights Resident on Entreprenurial Path

At first she didn't succeed, but Kelly Brindle is determined to try again. The 37-year-old resident was laid off in 2007 and decided it was time to go into business for herself.

That experience didn't go so well.

"I tried my hand at running my own business in web hosting and web design. I thought I'd run sites for clubs and organizations," she said. "I had a lot of meetings and demonstrating what I did but I couldn't close the sale. It's a lesson learned. I put a lot of financial stress on my family.

"It's hard. I'm the type of person who looks back and keeps thinking about what did I do wrong," she said.

Brindle said she learned that she's not cut out for sales and marketing. She also learned to better develop a business plan and is having a friend with an MBA assist her with plans for her new venture, which will provide billing and computer services to small businesses in the health care field.

Still, she's worried about taking the entrepreneurial plunge again.

"I'm scared out of my mind," she said. "My family's like, 'Are you sure you want to do it again?' My husband is the opposite of me, he's very conservative. He plays my devil's advocate on it."

Brindle, who has worked in information technology since 1993, has Cisco certification and experience managing computer networks and servers. Before launching RW & B Web Solutions in 2007, she was the IT systems administrator for Lifeclinic International, which supplies blood pressure monitors and health stations.

A merger and trend toward hosting web-based servers – cloud computing – led to being laid off from Lifeclinic. With a little more than a year on the job, she was the last one hired and found herself joining the growing number of IT professionals looking for work.

Recognizing that she needed to go where the industry was headed, she went back to school at Cuyahoga Community College to prepare for the changes and earn an associates degree in networking hardware and software.

That preparation has her more confident that her newest enterprise will succeed.

"I'm not alone this time. I have someone helping me and I have a partner relationship with Cisco. I can see where the market it headed," she said.